The enormous development of street and highway traffic results in a steadily growing number of traffic accidents. These accidents bring about great material losses and, more importantly, are incommensurable in relation to human losses: loss of life, or permanent invalidism. The safety of traffic on the highways and streets depends to a considerable degree on the fact that the driver reacts in a proper manner and sufficiently fast in a given hazardous traffic situation. The psychology of street and highway traffic attempts to understand and explain these problems. The subject of its investigation is a detailed analysis of the driver's work in order to establish psycho-physiological functions indispensable for its safe execution. The driver's work has a specific character. In addition to some acquired information, training and possession of driving competence, the driver is also required to possess a particular psycho-physiological competence, considering the dynamics of the driven vehicle and the human life and health hazards connected therewith.
Among the great number of drivers traveling on the streets and highways, there are certain who often do not realize that they have certain psycho-physiological deficiencies. This is why a necessity arises for controlling psycho-physiological characteristics of drivers before their licensing, and during their execution of work, as concerns changes, or disappearance of psycho-physiological competence.
The proper evaluation of psycho-physiological characteristics of a driver can be made only by using certain types of equipment specialized and adapted for this aim. One such types of equipment which serve such aims is my present invention. It can be used for studying the precision of motions connected with the tremor of hands which appears with illnesses of the nervous system, alcoholism, and old age. This device has been already successfully tested in several cases for determining the presence and degree of such afflictions.
The main purpose of this equipment is to test several psycho-physiological functions, primarily the study of optical and material coordination during a variable pace of work, with a maximum concentration of attention.